Bbenzon
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 6430 )
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Why Readers Hate the Media [Media Notes 36]
Andrew Porter, Issue 45: Why everyone hates the mainstream media. Policy for Pandemics. When I became managing editor of the Ottawa Citizen in 2011, I started t... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Origins of Music
Mehr, S. A., Krasnow, M. M., Bryant, G. A., Hagen, E. H. (2020). Origins of music in credible signaling. PsyArXiv. In revision. Read more
Posted on 09 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Social Network [Media Notes 35]
I was certainly aware of this film when it came about in 2010 but, for whatever reason, didn’t go out to see it. It went on to win a slew of awards, including... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Child's Guild to the Japanese Empire, 1936
I wrote up an overview of a Japanese children’s almanac from 1936: A Child’s Guide to Japanese Empire https://t.co/plfZaKEmul pic.twitter.com/kUaK3Q9NYL — Konra... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Ministry for the Future [people Get Ready]
That's the title of Kim Stanley Robinson's next novel, due out this October. The publisher's blurb: Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AGI is on the Way, NOT! (AGI = Artificial General Intelligence) [bounding AI]
Rodney Brooks, 17 May 2019: Brooks starts talking about various predictions various experts (such as Elon Musk) have made about self-driving automobiles,... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Turbulence, Japanese Style [Hiroshige]
Hiroshige - Whirlpools on a rocky coast #japan #japaneseart #hiroshige #広重 #ukiyoe #浮世絵 #日本美術... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Change at the Individual Level
NEW! @kkiley @vaiseys: With important exceptions, over time cultural change at the individual level happens via the replacement of people with settled... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Science in Science Fiction 2: 2001: A Space Odyssey – a Prophesy About the Comin...
Roger Ebert has argued that 2001: A Space Odyssey is fundamentally a metaphysical film making an ontological point: As we venture into space we are changing... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tracking Public Mood in the English Language World – Reaching a Peak/trough in...
The drop over the last four days amounts to as much as: 3 times the positive bump of a typical Thanksgiving, or 1.5 times the usual Christmas spike. Read more
Posted on 06 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tremors [Media Notes 35]
I saw the film on TV years ago and have been looking for it ever since. It’s now on Netflix. It’s as (weirdly) good as I remember. Not GREAT I suppose, but... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Space Travel and American Myth – "Whitey on the Moon”
Marina Koren, The False Hope of an American Rocket Launch, The Atlantic, June 3, 2020 Over the weekend, SpaceX flew two astronauts to the International Space... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Physicists Are Still Lost in Math
What's up in the foundations of physics? As some of you may know, Sabine Hossenfelder published Lost in Math in which she argued that the foundations of... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Space Force, WTF?! [Media Notes 34]
To paraphrase a cliché about Los Angeles, Space Force is a bunch of gags and other incidents in search of a story. Here’s how Wikipedia introduces it: Space... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Josephine Baker Born on 3 June 1906
The amazing Josephine Baker was BOTD in 1906. For her courageous efforts against Nazi fascism she earned the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force. Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Collective Effervescence – Bonding, Loud Music, Party Girls, and the Club...
Tyler Cowen interviews Ashley Mears, a former fashion model turned academic sociologist, author of Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Irises
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Showdown at the AI Corral, Or: What Kinds of Mental Structures Are...
There’s a big conversation going on in the AI world these days about appropriate architectures: Can new-style machine-learning/neural-net methods take us all th... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How SpaceX Lands Those Boosters [REMARKABLE!]
I've seen videos, but I still don't believe it, NOT! Is this is as remarkable as anything AI has so far accomplished? I'd like to think so but, truth be told,... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Did Buddy Bolden Die from Pellagra?
Previously unpublished research on Buddy Bolden, the earliest known jazz musician, offers a persuasive new theory on his mental illness and institutionalization... Read more
Posted on 01 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY